Researching Iranian Recipes

This Week’s Film: Gabbeh

Cuisine: Iranian

One of my favorite Asian cookbooks is Imperial Mongolian Cooking: Recipes from the Kingdoms of Genghis Khan by Marc Cramer. Although its title makes it seem limited to Mongolian cuisine, because of the vast scope of the Mongolian Empire at its height, the recipes it contains cover the map from the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, through the Middle East, all the way to Southeast Asia. This collection not only includes recipes from what is now the modern-day country of Mongolia, but also from those regions that were once encompassed by the Mongolian Empire, which includes China, Tibet, Burma, Vietnam, most of Eastern Europe, and parts of the Middle East. Which means that the collection includes a variety of dishes, from Greek dolmas to Vietnamese spring rolls.

The empire of Ghengis Khan is divided into four regions/eras: The Khanate of the Great Khan, Chaghadai Khanate, The Ilkhanate, and The Khanate of the Golden Horde. The Khanate of the Great Khan is the original empire of Ghengis Khan, which includes the cuisines of East Asia. The Chaghdai Khanate of the second son of Ghengis Khan includes the cuisines of western Asia. The Ilkhanate, ruled by the grandson of Ghengis Kahn, encompasses the cuisines of the Middle East. And The Khanate of the Golden Horde includes the cuisines of Eastern Europe.

So for this week?s Iranian recipe, I looked for dishes from the realm of the Ilkhanate. I also had rather specific criteria in mind: I wanted a dish with chicken as the main ingredient, and since I bought a pound of dried apricots a few days ago, I would like to include them in the dish as well. And although I didn?t find a recipe that satisfies both criteria, I did find a few tasty-looking ideas that, when synthesized with a few similar dishes I found on the Internet, will work nicely as a point of departure for creating my own unique dish.

My Iranian Apricot Chicken Pilaf recipe will be posted at the end of the week, along with my Gabbeh film review.